Urinary drainage bags are medically used in large numbers for patients carrying a urinary drainage catheter. Such a urinary drainage bag usually has auxiliary means for draining without separating it from the catheter, so that the bag can be emptied and refilled over many hours or several days, without changing the bag.
As the result of this, a risk exists in the use of drainage bags that pathogenic bacteria may be accidentally innoculated into the stored urine, where they multiply. Even though most urinary drainage bags carry a drip chamber to form an air barrier and a dry wall gap, to prevent bacteria from migrating upstream from the container to the catheter, the possibility remains of the patient acquiring an infection, if the urine in the bag becomes highly infected with bacteria.
The growth and proliferation of bacteria within urine, which is an adequate growth medium, is thought to be a contributing factor to greater than one-half of all hospital-acquired urinary tract infections. The infecting bacteria may be accidentally introduced during drainage of the collected urine from the bag, unless aseptic techniques are carefully used, which of course is inconvenient, and in fact is not generally in use in hospitals.
Once the interior of the urine drainage bag is innoculated with pathogenic bacteria, growth and multiplication of the bacteria can proceed rapidly to concentrations which can be infective for the urinary tract. This is generally regarded to be 10,000 or more organisms per ml. of urine.
In accordance with this invention, urine drainage containers are modified to suppress the growth of bacteria in urine by a highly inexpensive, substantially non-toxic technique without the need for antiseptics or the like.